At Chicago’s Midway Airport on the morning of the World Series opener, I boarded a Kansas City-bound Southwest Airlines flight packed with Royals fans chanting “Sweep.”

As an unreconstructed Midwesterner, I was surprised. We aren’t known for our bravado, us Midwesterners. We’re likelier to express gratitude for what we have—Oh, we’re lucky to have made it this far—than confidence about what we want.

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But after talking with a few of these fans, I realized that behind their big talk was fear: The Royals had stormed through three postseason rounds without a loss, planting in their fans’ minds a gigantic doubt: Could this team’s magical ride withstand a loss?

Well, the 7-1 embarrassment now known as Game 1 put that theory to test, leaving the Royals in what looked like a deep hole. Prone all season to bouts of offensive narcolepsy, Royals hitters during the opener appeared to be nodding off at the plate.

But Wednesday night changed everything. Kansas City’s 10-hit attack in a 7-2 win included four doubles and an Omar Infante home run that proved yet again that on a given night anybody on the Royals’ roster can play hero. And if the team’s vaunted outfielders looked merely human in Game 2, with Lorenzo Cain in particular missing a couple of highlight-reel opportunities, the Kansas City bullpen performed even more sharply than advertised, with Kelvin Herrera and Wade Davis masterfully shutting down the Giants in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings so that Greg Holland could stroll in and register three strikeouts in the ninth.

Flying out of Kansas City Thursday morning on another flight filled with Royals fans, I found them quieter and more assured than before the World Series began. Gone was the fear of emulating the 2007 Rockies, who seemed invincible in that year’s postseason until they got swept in the World Series.

My impression is that Kansas City fans are feeling more confident than ever (which may not be saying much). The order of the split in Kansas City assured them that their team could bounce back from a postseason setback. It also sent their team to San Francisco with a sense that the momentum in this series had shifted their way.

The Royals all season played well on the road, winning 47 games at opponents’ parks versus 42 at Kauffman Stadium. In this postseason, moreover, the Royals remain undefeated on the road, having won two games against the Angels in Anaheim and two against the Orioles in Baltimore.

The next two Royals starters, Jeremy Guthrie and Jason Vargas, both started games against Baltimore that the Royals wound up winning, in each case 2-1. And though the scheduled starter for Sunday’s Game 5 is James Shields, the victim of Tuesday night’s shellacking, the feeling in Kansas City is that Big Game James is eager for another opportunity to earn that nickname.

On the cusp of Friday’s Game 3, San Francisco fans must be feeling confident, too. The split in Kansas City looks identical to the split the Giants won during the first two games of the National League Championship Series in St. Louis, and let’s not forget what happened when the action moved to San Francisco: The Giants swept the Cardinals in that three-game stand to claim the National League pennant.

The Giants are tough at home, where they won 45 regular-season games, versus 43 victories on the road. Should the Giants win Friday and Saturday and turn the ball over Sunday to Madison Bumgarner, the unbeatable-looking winner of Game 1, well, there’s always next year for the young Royals.

If it doesn’t go down that way, however, the feeling at Kauffman Stadium is that the Royals aren’t going to lose this series at home.